Niittymaki made 37 saves tonight which makes his record against the Thrashers 15-0

Stamkos got the only goal in regulation

Martin St. Louis went down after being knocked down by Pavel Kubina, the photo that emerged did not show St. Louis in the most attractive facial expression. Kinda leech-like or something going on there

Fedoruk got kicked in the junk

The Thrashers have lost the last 13 of 15 on the road. That reminds me of the Lightning...

The Green Men were in attendance of this game

Foster has a disallowed shootout goal as it went off of his leg on the rebound from Hedberg's initial stop

Everyone's favorite ref, Stephane Auger is reffing this game

Halpern scored in the 5th round of the shootout

Attendance is reported as 16212. The Nashville @ Colorado game tonight had an attendance of 12452, then again, upper bowl seats were like $10 non?

Donate to Haiti! See a hockey game! For only 10 bucks....what? So the Lightning will be the real leaders in the donations race in the NHL right? The management can barely afford their own team, oh wait they can't?

With all the changes in the Lightning these days, it seems like the circus is back to town. The Lightning just picked up center Nate Thompson off of waivers from the NY Islanders. Cristodero says there is a corresponding move coming, so does that mean Wright is going down?

Hedman will be benched tonight because of his poor play, with Hale and Walker drawing in to the lineup. Then you ask yourself, what the hell? 1 guy scratched, 2 D in, math just doesn't add up. That's because Foster will be playing as a forward. Like I said, it seems like the circus is back to town. Oh and that Paul Ranger coming back soon thing, seems like a myth.

The Lightning have split the last two meeting with the Leafs, the next time we play them will be on March 11th. After embarrassing massacres, the Lightning really need to win a game.

I'm having a hockey high today, two games on deck (Lightning/Leafs, Canucks/Stars) that I can actually see on my TV in my living room....last year it seemed the Lightning were always invading TSN...now it's been a rare occurrence. As always, I'm excited for the quiz and James Duthie.

You will have noticed to the right of your screen, I now have the Bloguin Olympic penguin up and a list new posts on the Olympic Hockey Blog. Check out the site for all of your bloggy Olympic Hockey needs, it is ridiculously good and really will only get better.

For your Lightning fix, the player profile on Andrej Meszaros written by yours truly is up and can be found here. I'll post links for Lightning related posts as they get posted.

The blog of Bruce MacLeod of the Macomb Daily has some interesting stuff on the loan to the Lightning from Palace Sports and Entertainment. MacLeod writes that the Lightning have defaulted on the loan, which is not surprising to hear, since the owners are OK Hockeyt. Wasn't there some deadline of ownership buyout? That deadline has long since passed with no news. Another source of MacLeod's says that the NHL is setting a Feb 15 deadline for new ownership. Ok so that's right at the start of the Olympics, but then you gotta ask yourself, who would really want to buy the team?

The Lightning are last in the list of teams with regards to the number of man-games lost, what I'm saying in English, is that out of all the 30 NHL teams, we have the fewest man-games lost at 47. Edmonton leads the league with 270. Ouch. And the Lightning have 1 point less than the number of games played....errr...

The Lightning are teaming up with the American Red Cross to donate money to Haiti. For the next 8 games, the team is pricing certain seats at $65 for lower level seats and $10 for upper level seats. The Lightning will then donate $15 for each lower level seat, and $5 for each upper level seat to the Red Cross. So do the math, you go to the game, pay 5 bucks for a ticket and donate 5 bucks to charity, it really is win-win here. You can go to a hockey game and feel like you did something nice. For more info, see here

Cristodero is thinking that Hedman will most likely be benched for the game against the Leafs

Tocchet said:

"We might have to take a step back with him," Tocchet said. "He's played a lot of hockey. There are a lot of expectations. He's been struggling. He's been making some mistakes, so we might have to take a step back. He might have to watch a game. There's nothing wrong with that. we did it with Stamkos." -Lightning Strikes

Tough break for Hedman, but I find that the Lightning may have been a factor in his struggles as they have not managed his ice time well, giving him way more time than he should get some nights.

Although Smith practiced for third consecutive day, it is unlikely he'll play tomorrow against the Leafs, so instead we should see Niittymaki again

Game time against the Leafs is at 7pm, because well, it's on TSN lovelies and they have a bit of say as to when they want their games shown

This is pretty much what Versus vierwers got to see last night...over and over and over again.

Did I say in the game preview that the Rangers were having trouble scoring? Yeah, I think they fixed that problem. By the time I had gotten to my dinner location, where they were conveniently playing this game, it was already an embarrassing 6-2. And Tokarski then was in net. And the Lightning played very very very bad. Final score was 8-2. Puke.

The Rangers (23-19-7) stomped all over the Canadiens yesterday with Wade Redden getting into a fight! OMFG. And Avery had a tussle with Josh Gorges. After having trouble scoring goals over the past few games, the Rangers came back in the 2nd and 3rd period against the Habs with 6 unanswered goals. Will this continue?

The Lighting won over the Hurricanes last night, with goals from Malone, Lecavalier and Downie (!). The Lightning are still without Mike Smith as he is back home in Tampa getting treatment for his neck strain (there only so many times I can call it a cervical strain, far too much giggling every time I do), so in net Niitymaki will mostly likely by starting in net with Toka backing him up.

Tonight's game will be broadcasted nationally on Versus in the US, with TSN2 picking up the Versus feed for Canada. Joy. Enjoy the game kiddos.

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